Howard declined to comment on personnel matters but said the Conservancy has maintained a presence in Savannah for 39 years and intends to continue. He declined to predict when the office would again be staffed.

"There's no one there," he said of the Conservancy's office in the United Way Building. "Just because they have left, the staff has left, doesn't mean we have left Savannah."

The office will eventually reopen in the same building, he said.

Berson had been the Conservancy's longtime point man on harbor deepening. He actively participated in more than a decade of stakeholder meetings that helped shape the studies on the project, often asking questions others were too timid to broach. He penned the official comments on the deepening plan sent to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Jan. 25, Howard said, though Howard's signature appears on the four-page letter.

Those comments express more reservation about harbor deepening than does an opinion piece from Howard published Tuesday in the Savannah Morning News, said Savannah Riverkeeper Tonya Bonitatibus.

In the op-ed, Howard wrote, "The Georgia Conservancy's mission is to promote policies that enable the environment and the people of Georgia to thrive. For that reason, we do not intend to stand in the way of deepening the Savannah harbor."

But the Conservancy's four-page public comment equivocates on where the support or opposition to deepening will end up, indicating it would be based on the adequacy of mitigation, which it then calls "fundamentally flawed in three respects."

"If things are fundamentally flawed, it doesn't help to say, 'We won't stand in your way but could you fix these little things?'" Bonitatibus said.

Howard said the two documents don't contradict, but have different purposes.

"An op-ed is an op-ed and a comment is a comment," he said. "An op-ed is nothing more than trying to explain to the public where we're coming from. Our hope and belief is that there's adequate mitigation in place so we can support the deepening.

"I don't think there's any substantive difference between them."

That's not how Dave Kyler, executive director of the Center for a Sustainable Coast, sees it.

"It's impossible to reconcile the two," Kyler said. "One would have to be profoundly demented to say what he said in the paper after filing those comments."

Berson confirmed that he is no longer employed at the Conservancy but declined further comment.

Bonitatibus said she didn't know whether Berson's departure was connected to the letter.

"If not, I'd say it's an interesting coincidence," she said.

And Howard isn't connecting any dots.

"It's none of your business if the op-ed is at odds with something Will Berson thought," Howard said.

Howard also downplayed his group's influence over the deepening decision.

"The Georgia Conservancy is not going to determine if the harbor is deepened or not," he said. "We're trying to do everything we can as it goes forward for the environment to be protected. That's our job. I came out of retirement to do it," said the former lieutenant governor of Georgia.

"In this area of endeavor people always try to pick apart anything you say. The words speak for themselves; people can interpret them any way they like."